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Christie fundraiser Mary Smith recently held a golf day to raise money for The Christie Charity. Here, Mary talks through her tops tips if you’re looking to organise your own charity golf tournament.
Organising your charity golf day
Decide on the date together with your golf club and whether you want to plan a smaller, more personal golf event or a bigger and more corporate event. For example, I chose to plan a more personal golf day, with virtually all of the golfers on the day knowing my husband, as we were celebrating his life with the event.
Once you know when and where your charity golf day is taking place, contact The Christie Charity with the date and rough details to let them know about your fundraising plans. Ask your club if you can have a shotgun start on the day, so different teams can tee off from different holes at the same time. You can also have a 2 tee start time, so one team starts off the 1st hole and another starts off the 10th hole at the same time.
If you want more people playing, you’ll need to have separate tee times throughout the day. This might cause issues as you’ll want as many people as possible to finish at the same time for prizes, any auctions or end-of-day meals.
Send out an email to anyone you think might be interested in your charity golf day, giving them information about the date, the person you are doing it for and the charity you are raising money for. You might also be able to email your whole golf club later if you still have any last places to fill up.
Ask for teams to be entered with players’ names and handicaps at least 6 weeks before by email. You should also let the team captain know they are responsible for telling their team members all information about the day.
Decide if you want to have a raffle and an auction. If you do, you need to ask for raffle prizes and auction donations. We asked the whole club for donations and a few local businesses.
Some ideas for auction prizes are rounds of golf for 4 at the club, vouchers for meals, nights away, golf clubs and bags or car parking space at the club. Your golf club might also offer a donation for the auction or raffle prizes.
You’ll also need to liaise with the club on refreshments and to make sure they’ll have plenty of staff on. Bacon and sausage baps have always proved particularly popular for people to buy before they go out.
I always organise a halfway house and provide cakes and snacks (people donate the food). You will need a gazebo, trestle tables and chairs and people to man this (I used non-golfing family members and friends).
The Christie Charity can provide volunteer tee shirts, balloons, banners and collecting tins if you need them.
Running the golf day
In terms of charging for our charity golf day, we did entries by donations, with people paying by cash or card on the day itself. We also charged an additional green fee in the pro shop at our club for non-members – you can negotiate this with the pro if you want to offer this.
On the day of your charity golf event, you will need a sign in desk. This will need to be manned by at least 4 people: 1 to hand out cards and a rules sheet, 1 to run the raffle (if you’re having one!), 1 to take money for the competitions on the day and 1 to collect the entry donations.
You’ll also need 2 starters if you are having a 2 tee start to set your groups off, with a list of times and teams. It’s not essential but it’s also really useful to have a leaderboard written out with all team times and names on, and you can update this as each team comes in.
Lastly, you need a main scorer who will collect and collate and update the leaderboard, a persuasive auctioneer, a trophy and prizes for the winning 3 teams, and someone to prepare the cards for the day (this could be the club manager).
You need a list of competitions you’re planning to host on the day. For example, we do ‘beat the pro’, nearest to the pin, longest drive and a twos competition, where anyone who makes a 2 score on a hole wins a share of the prize. We charged £10 per person to enter all 4 of those.
To run your competitions, you will need a friendly pro golfer, lots of sleeves of balls for the twos competition and prizes for nearest the pin and longest drive.
For our golf day, we had maximum playing handicaps of 36 for ladies and 28 for men after the Slope rating was applied. We used the Stableford scoring format, full handicap, 2 to count on all holes, 3 to count on the 9th and 18th holes, and all 4 to count on the par 3s.
The raffle can be drawn once all the players have gone out and people can then look to see if they have won anything when they come in.
For the end of the day, don’t forget your ‘thank you’ speeches and prize giving after your auction.
To find out more about how your golf fundraising can make a difference to The Christie Charity, please contact us at the-christie.golf@nhs.net or by calling us on 07977 359 824.